


I'd kill for you.

by chocolatemilk2



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Fall, better than titanic, big scary cave, god this is depressing, kink-meme prompt, un-beta'd, water play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-27
Updated: 2012-05-27
Packaged: 2017-11-06 02:34:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/413781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chocolatemilk2/pseuds/chocolatemilk2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock would kill, (himself) for John.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'd kill for you.

**Author's Note:**

> Based off a prompt on the kink meme, "Sherlock proposes to John. " Sorry this kind of has to do with the fall D: only realized after, my bad.

It's hopeless.

The tide is coming in, great gushes of water swirling at the mouth of the cave, wind sucking in and out in shallow gasps over the break, that short whistle of air like a smoker hyperventilating.

Sherlock is sopping wet and shivering. They're both miserable and John can't swim, Afghanistan saw to that. His shoulder is numb and his legs are numb and no one knows they're out here. Lestrade and Mycroft still think Sherlock is dead from the fall and Mycroft blames John for his brother's apparent death.

"There might be an investigation," Sherlock offers through clattering teeth. "You were an army soldier."

It's little reassurance. The search will only come when they are dead-- John has only been away from the flat seven hours now. It's late, early morning actually, and anyone who might notice will be distracted or asleep. Harry won't care.

"It was a dark and stormy night," John intones, and Sherlock throws him a wry glance. He looks exhausted, eyes smudged and swollen, skin yellow, countanence drained from the massive effort of pulling two people through rough surf on a freezing cold night in the rain.

They sit on a precipice curved around the deep mouth of the rock face, the water churns around their ankles. It was at the tip of their toes when they arrived, smashed against the rock wall and clinging to one another. Wherever John turned his head he'd found salt water, gushed from the sky or from the sea itself. They spent the first few minutes coughing, hacking out the small pools settled at the base of their lungs, and John vomited up the excess water he swallowed. He can still taste the salt and the back of his mouth and craves a drink to wash it down with.

Sherlock's teeth are clattering, and John wonders what he's thinking, what he'd think to think in his last moments and if they'd be any more hyperaware or callous than his usual. A wave from nowhere smashes into their sides, smacking them into the hard rock wall and they flinch and John curses. He can't stand this constant waiting. John would much prefer a nice quick death by a bullet than this grueling torture.

He's freezing without his jumper, which was weighing him down and John remembers Mrs Hudson knitted it for him that last Christmas.

"You jumped for me," John says, his voice a scratch at the back of his throat. "Both times."

Sherlock doesn't reply. It hurts John's heart to know that Sherlock would jump off a cliff after him to save John from his own suicide when John couldn't even stay alive for him when he thought Sherlock was dead. In those few moments before their double impact he imagined he had died, that Sherlock was carrying him to the afterlife in some strange, dreamlike hallucination.

"You shouldn't have done it," John scolds. He closes his eyes and tilts his head back. The cold is creeping up his knees but his hips are already numb and he doesn't want to know when it happens. Sherlock makes a small noise in his throat. Rain pours harder to a pound, a rythmn of white noise so much like death. Water covers their tracks and water will wash away their bones. John wonders if he will be like a corpse washed up on the jagged rocky beaches or if he will sink down to the deepest layers of the earth. Sherlock would know.

John hears his teeth chattering over the mist of water falling and it is so much darker now when he opens his eyes, although they have adjusted to the night shadows have enveloped both their faces and veil of water blots out the moonlight.

He can still see the glitter of fear in Sherlock's eyes, the brightest thing about him, and John throws an arm over his shoulder and pulls him close. The man is even clammier than he is.

Water laps around their stomachs. "The rain looks like a waterfall," John murmurs, peering across at the small light. "A big sheet. I always wanted to see a real one."

"When we get out I'll take you to to Niagra Falls," Sherlock promises flatly and John admires his caution, that death hasn't lubricated his tongue into self-admission like it has done his.

John knows they're not going to get out, and that he's never going to see a proper waterfall. "I would've left it all to you, you know. I would have given you everything."

Just in case, the impossible, that Sherlock was still alive even though John was killing himself because he thought Sherlock wasn't. Not that he ever had many possessions, that he ever dreamed he'd have anything to give to Sherlock that could be truly valued.

They're elbow deep. "Thank you," John adds, and bites his lip hard enough to bleed and he wished Sherlock didn't try to save his life and risk his own, he regrets jumping towards a place where he would be sure not to find escape in the fall-out if he did survive the impact. His fault, he killed them, he killed them both. Sherlock jumped and John had yearned to know what the man experienced before death, the rushing of air against skin, but never dreamt to go out the same way until he did.

Lestrade took my gun, John wants to tell Sherlock. PTSD, they took all the knives, a failed OD and they would never have let me out of the hospital.

Sherlock's finally alive, but so quiet and soon they'll both be gone. Buried beneath black waves. "Sherlock." Please talk to me, please say something. "Sherlock, I'm here."

The detective squeezes his eyes shut. "I love you. I love you more than anything on earth, more than the work, more than drugs, than music, I spent every day we had trying to realize how to tell you. I wanted you to be happy and I didn't think you were happy with me until I died and you weren't. I wanted to see you move on, and I just wanted to be with you--"

John knows the end of the sentence Sherlock chokes on, that he couldn't stand to see him living in pain and he wanted him to be around to make him feel better. John can't watch the tremor run through his best friend's face and the shudders that rake his ribs and he squeezes tighter and presses goodbyes into Sherlock's neck with his lips. "Me too."

"Marry me after," Sherlock demands, pulling away to look in his eyes.

"Yes," John whispers.

The water swallows them up.


End file.
